Our Aston Villa kit launch with Under Armour has been the most successful across the English Football League (EFL)

Aston Villa has reported that the launch of the club’s 2016/17 strip – the first of Under Armour’s new five-year deal – has been the most successful across the English Football League (EFL) Championship, according to the club.

The campaign, ‘Fight Like Lions’, was launched when the club’s new home and away kits were revealed on Facebook through a cinematic video, designed and produced with digital sports engagement agency WePlay.

The video features Jonathan Fear – a life-long Villa fan and owner of fan site Vital Villa – alongside current Villa Ladies first team player, Bethan Merrick.

“The most successful kit launch across the EFL Championship”.

Revealed through Facebook and supported with teasers on Twitter, Instagram and influencer channels, the video has already become the club’s second highest performing video on social with over 400,000 views just on Facebook, making it the most successful kit launch across the EFL Championship.

Earlier this year, Villa signed a kit partnership with Under Armour until 2021.

WePlay was selected by Villa to impact the creative, produce video content, teasers and behind-the-scenes content while helping to distribute the campaign across social media in synchronisation with the official unveiling of the new kits at the Villa Park Megastore.

Kenny Ager, client services director of WePlay, added: “This project was about creating an inspiring piece of content that reconnected Villa fans with the club while showcasing Aston Villa’s commitment to delivering quality activation and content for its commercial partners. We wanted to create something genuine that both fans and influencers would be proud of. This has raised the bar for Villa’s future commercial partners by showing them and other clubs the impact that great content can have on sports fans.”

To deliver against our vision we engaged WePlay who are specialists in digital engagement within the sport industry and we’re very happy with the result.”

Will Radford, head of media, content & marketing at Aston Villa FC, added: “We had a vision to create a high quality kit launch reveal to announce our new partnership with Under Armour. As a part of the reveal we needed to encompass Aston Villa’s brand values, re-engage our fan base with a premium partner, and demonstrate the club’s new focus on high quality media output.

To deliver against our vision we engaged WePlay who are specialists in digital engagement within the sport industry and we’re very happy with the result.”